CARPAY: Bill C-22 is a threat to hard-won liberties
CARPAY: Bill C-22 is a threat to hard-won liberties
https://www.junonews.com/p/carpay-bill-c-22-is-a-threat-to-hard
Publish Date: 2026-05-25 08:03:00
Source Domain: www.junonews.com
Facebook (Gary Anandasangaree)
By: John Carpay
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
In free societies, police must go to court to obtain a warrant before conducting ongoing surveillance of a person’s communications. This system has protected both public safety and individual liberty for centuries. Yet that hard-won balance now stands under threat from proposed legislation that would dramatically expand government power.
MPs will soon vote on Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. The federal government claims that Bill C-22 is needed in order to give police and CSIS broader surveillance powers to go after criminal activity, and that it’s an improvement over its earlier version Bill C-2, which was shelved last fall following massive public outcry. Under the pretext of “public safety,” this legislation would expand state power over ordinary Canadians while doing nothing to address the actual legal architecture that allows transnational criminal networks to operate in Canada with near impunity.
Given its broad definition of “electronic service providers,” Bill C-22 would require “core providers” like Rogers, Bell, Google and WhatsApp to retain metadata for up to one year, and build systems for rapid data handover when law enforcement presents a valid authorization. These requirements would also come with gag orders, preventing the companies from informing Canadians when or why their data was accessed. The bill also lowers the legal standard for police to obtain users’ subscriber information from “reasonable grounds to believe” to the much weaker “reasonable grounds to suspect.”
Why do Canadians cherish privacy in the first place? If a person has nothing to hide, why should they care if the authorities can read their emails, texts, or AI conversations? Why does Section 8 of the Charter expressly protect Canadians against unreasonable search and seizure?
Even completely innocent people who have…
